Though I don’t talk about it much on this blog, I am no slouch in the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 series. Having invested hundreds of hours into it, I wreak havoc online and it’s generally the game I do best at in tournaments. Say what I will about having the #1 ranked Rose in Canada on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, my best tournament placing to-date across any game is 25th in MvC 3 at T12; a point that arguably holds more weight in my fighting game resume.
Having said that, I have a glaring hole in my skill-set that keeps me from ascending to the upper echelon of players: my inability to land the biggest combos.
I generally hate practicing combos in any fighting game. With enough effort, I’ve proven to myself in other games that I pull off the higher-level stuff in other fighters. However, the process of learning and mastering combos is such a slog. There isn’t really any shortcuts to practice. Just keep repeating same actions until you’ve got them down pat.
Ultimately, it’s a process you have to go through if you want to be good at any fighting game. Combos help you maximize damage, which helps you win matches off of fewer openings. In a game like this, having large combos in your repertoire is crucial. At the highest level of play, almost every combo is optimized to the point where it’s basically a one-touch kill.
The bane of my existence since the game’s release have been flight combos, where characters with the ability to fly activate it mid-combo and then keep the sequence going as they’re floating. As someone who plays Storm and Magneto, not having a flight combo in my back pocket has proven problematic.
Things get tricky right after launching my opponent into the air. The trick at this point is to connect with an attack (or sequence of attacks) that I can quickly cancel into flight mode, followed immediately with another attack. It’s a lot of button presses and joystick motions in a very short amount of time, which tripped me up for years. Beyond that, these combos are heavily dependent on you having the exact timing and spacing.
I would practice Magneto’s flight combo on and off for years. It wasn’t until relatively recently when I ‘solved’ the combo and can do it now fairly consistently. From there, I spent a lot of time getting Storm’s down. There’s still a long ways to go towards mastery of the game, but I’m still working at it and having a blast doing so. I’ll post a video of these combos and a few others soon!
In Third Person 